Last month I wrote about an Italian film that was a huge international success. This month I choose one by another Italian that I admire. This film was considered a total disaster critically and financially. It’s about American youth in the 60’s in rebellion against the establishment. At the time, Michaelangelo Antonioni’s ninth film was one of the worst money losers in history. Since then, “Zebriski Point” has been almost universally put down.
The worst part of “Zabrisiki” is its performances, but I think I have seen acting like this one other time, when it was being praised. It was in a performance of “Iphigenia at Aulis” by Euripides; a play that portrays a father ritually sacrificing his daughter to the gods to boost his standing in the Trojan War. Those in the audience who were gushing over the performances were aware the acting technique was antique, but it gave us a pleasure, similar to hearing music played on period instruments.
When I first watched it, I thought Antonioni was sacrificing the darling daughter of America, namely consumerism, to the gods of youth and beauty whom the Greeks called Aphrodite and Adonis. Likewise, I thought Antonioni’s decision to make the actor’s performance seem wooden was a classy homage to the Greek origins of western drama.
I have since read that Antonioni gambled on his lead actors, choosing pretty looking revolutionaries that were amateur actors and he found them very difficult to work with, especially the boy.
Before reading much about it though, I thought Antonioni was also poking fun at American porn films from that time period.
By the 1960’s adult films had evolved from crude roll playing in one reel stag movies, into feature scenarios with badly acted narratives quickly leading to expertly conducted sex scenes. Those brightly lit, fuzzy-edged frames were later labeled “soft-core” after hard-core went mainstream.
The big orgy at “Zebriski Point” was a feast for Antonioni’s detractors. Again, I found the choreography so campy, and put-on that it was a turn off instead of a turn on. Which is exactly what I would expect from Antonioni. He regularly plays against expectations in his films, so I didn’t question it. I presumed it had sprung from the filmmaker’s genius and I laughed with him and enjoyed myself. My laughter turned to awe while the cinematography at the end of the scene made the episode seem, by turns, sublime and transcendental.
In my untutored state, I thought the decision to make the final “Point” of his movie with multi-camera documentary footage of the demolition of an opulent resort home reason enough to make his feature in the first place. It might help you to understand that the story begins in a crowded room where American university students are plotting a revolution.
Symbolically, this finale could be read as Antonioni strapping consumerist society to a bomb and detonating it. He was in America for the first time, shooting in legendary California, the movie Mecca of the world. Here was a deep-thinking outsider making the authorities nervous with his portrayal of alienated American youth. I read that the Feds grew so paranoid and suspicious they tried to run the production into the ground. Would the critics rescue him? Nope.
As a consequence, many people will never see this superbly controlled and photographed event, invented in the late sixties before big explosions in movies had come into vogue. You used to have to watch a two-hour, playfully stylish, and mythical love tragedy to get to these closing fireworks. This scene can be watched as a stand-alone event now. It lasts about five minutes. Watch it full-screen, if possible. Tell me what you think the director had in mind.
This month’s blog will take the disaster in Japan for it’s theme. May those suffering the most find the strength to endure and may all of us join together for a solution.
I’m going to let a character named Billy Pritchard from my most recent finished feature film screen play make a statement on behalf of us all. Let’s just listen in without any preamble…
Billy steps forward and adjusts the microphone like he’s done it a hundred times.
BILLY-“Brothers and Sisters, let me have a quick word with you. I’m Billy Pritchard. Some of you may know who I am. It’s not important. I used to have a Sunday morning television show. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because, well, you’re not ready to go home yet are you? Happy Independence to all of you!”
The crowd answers with enthusiasm.
Billy looks off stage now. The crowd sounds intensify. He’s getting a nod from the stage manager, so he goes on. He looks down at Sallassa who is waving at him with a big smile. Donna is next to her beaming with pride.
Jules is at the foot of the stage with the camera tilted up at Billy shouting directions.
JULES-“We’re live. Go preacher.”
BILLY-“I’ve always believed in heaven and hell.”
He pauses, gathering courage. Some in the crowd murmur their encouragement.
BILLY-“You know, unbelievers liked to make fun, but I ask you, believers and unbelievers alike, what more literal proof of a bona-fide hell does anyone need? As we live and breathe, the flaming bowels of the under world swell with fires from, petroleum and nuclear origins, in which you, me and our dear Mother Nature are slowly roasting.”
The crowd makes a collective groan.
BILLY-“The very air and skies are burning which was predicted by the prophets. You say “But the Lord was supposed to come and take us first.” SORRY! That happened, some say sixty years ago. Everybody knows the atomic bomb was the Antichrist. Stop pretending that you didn’t know that. Do the math.”
Blacky has been standing about half way back from the stage and he’s heard enough. Woolman stands next to him.
BLACKY-“Prove it.”
On a screen in his mind, Billy hunkers down into his familiar crouch. His body remains standing though, stage struck, trembling before the sight of Blacky. Then Billy sees the camera and gazes in to the tunnel of Jules’ lens.
BILLY-“You say, ‘ Well If this is hell, why didn’t God take my God fearing grandma?’”
BLACKY(shouts above him)-“This man’s speech is unclean.”
JULES-No sir. He’s talking about Hell in the bible.
BILLY-“I’m saying we become captives of that place even before we die.”
BLACKY-“That’s foolishness from a fool.”
BILLY-“I beg your pardon sir, but, the Lord promised,’I am retuning very soon,’ did he not? It’s been a long, long time since somebody said the Lord said that. I’m here to tell you the Judgment Day is past and over with and we did not pass over with it. So get over it.”
Woolman makes his very first utterance.
WOOLMAN-“Boo.” A few others join in
Billy cocks his head at him, puzzled, but manages to keep momentum.
BILLY-“We’ll pass with the gas of the underworld now with a grievous longing for the artifacts of heaven, which we gave up far too easily here on earth.”
BLACKY-“Hold your tongue.”
WOOLMAN-‘Boo.”
BILLY-“I know it’s a shock. I’m sorry. It’s hard to believe, but we’re damned.”
WOOLMAN-“Boo.”
A few more in the crowd join in. Jules is rubbernecking now, capturing the confrontation ground zero.
BILLY-“What if it’s true? Think about it.”
BLACKY-“Stop now, Voice of Satan.”
More booing ensues. Suddenly there is a screech in the crowd nearby. It is Bo, the fiddle player, strafing his strings. All eyes go to the noise on which the fiddler capitalizes.
BO-“I’ve never heard anyone talk like this man. I’m curious. Isn’t everybody else? I say let him speak. It’s only his opinion.”
With that his bow strikes fiddle strings once more. The crowd generally goes with him, some even applaud and whistle. Blacky shouts over the noise.
BLACKY-“That one is bogus too. They’re working this crowd.”
BO-“Come on. Let him perform. Everybody else has. Free speech is what 4th of July’s about.”
BLACKY-“Devil speaks in him.”
Jules shouts.
JULES-“Hells bells. It’s show business. Shut up and let a devil work.”
WOOLMAN-“Boo.”
Billy waits. Now the crowd rally’s for him. Billy has their attention and so must speak. He fixes his eyes on Blacky.
BILLY-“What’s your argument with me, brother? I’m not defending opinions, dogmas, ideologies, gossip, none of that.”
Woolman starts making for the back of the crowd.
BILLY-“Whichever way we’ve disagreed about how things ought to be done, there are really only five simple needs: clean air, food, water, shelter, and security. That’s all it takes to make this earth a paradise, for everyone. This is the meaning of the cross. That’s all there is. Don’t you keep asking yourself, how hard can it be? I do. Why are we waiting? Have we abandoned ourselves and fallen so far back that we could not even see the Lord when he came and divided His winners from The Enemy’s losers?”
Billy claps his hands for emphasis.
BILLY-“Boom! The righteous, just, off they went without notice. Nobody bothered to tell the losers. Is that it?”
Crowd answers a resounding “no”.
BILLY-“I hope not either. But, friends and strangers, believers and non-believers, we don’t have to live like this. Heaven exists for us now if we want it. This earth can be a paradise. We could provide the necessities for ourselves, and each other. The command, to love one another, grants us total freedom to achieve that dream. That awful smog in the air is the burning consequence of our refusal to do so thus far.’
WOOLMAN-‘Hypocrite.”
Billy’s look into Jules’ lens lets us know he knows is a close up.
BILLY-“Ladies and gentlemen. That man has followed me for days pretending he did not have the gift of speech. That he is choosing to reveal his voice now, I find startlingly suspicious.”
Blacky-“You are a disgraced preacher.”
To cut it off, Billy quickly folds hands and bows head.
BILLY-“Thank you for your time and attention ladies and gentlemen. From the bottom of my heart, I ask your blessing and forgiveness. May the Lord bless and forgive us all.”
He surrenders the microphone and plunges into the crowd after Woolman.
A new psychedelic movie I watched last week thrust me back to bardos I had not wandered since the 70’s. “Enter the Void” concerns the “Tibetan Book of the Dead”. The movie is shocking and heavy-handed. The acting isn’t really very good, but the film is relentless once it hooks you. You’re glad they’re not better actors or it might leave a deeper scar. At more than one point I had to take my eyes off the screen. It was too long. So is hell. I looked around at the audience. No one was breathing. The movie theater felt like a Petri dish. Images and sound suspended us in a synthesis of color/shadow, movement, noise/music, editing, “high” art and blood red drama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKRxDP–e-Y
For an entirely different example of psychedelic cinema, have a look at another recent popular film, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.” This hilarious and prolonged derangement of the senses comes courtesy of the video game that is teenager Scott Pilgrim’s life. Hallucinogenic stories like these are able to sell their hyper-realities thanks to a firmly established psychedelic appetite in the modern audience. Like acid tests, the lens tracks themes of Pilgrim’s progress from random to ego shaking. Scott racks up more and more multidimensional payoffs as he learns new rules and adapts to shifting circumstances.
It is good to see the psychedelic experience imaginatively presented in popular movies because of how much that can help us think outside the box.
Drugs get all the credit for psychedelic culture but motion pictures have always probed those possibilities. As far back as the 1929 silent classic “Man With A Movie Camera,” pioneer filmmakers undertook experiments to alter perceptions. They ingeniously employed superimposition, speeding up or slowing down, bending, blending, splintering, splicing; wielding light and shadow to peck away surface appearance and reveal essence. The current reach toward perfecting 3D and digital FX are the continuation of that tradition.
Before film came along altered states were cataloged by anthropologists, but early hallucinogenic accounts turn up everywhere from the Book of Revelation to the Rig Veda. Who can say which visions were drug influenced and which were not? The “Tibetan Book of the Dead” catalogs elevator stops, or “bardo’s,” of a soul’s journey back to reincarnation after death without mention of drugs. Timothy Leary re-published the same text as a tripping manual.
Drug experimentation became a fad in the 1960’s. Hallucinogens inoculate culture with what medicine societies and shaman of many traditions have known for millennia. Plant medicines provided an alternative perspective, a glimpse outside the box. Sound familiar? The digital revolution carries this potential now.
These days “outside the box” is a commonplace term for innovative thinking and drugs are by no means the only way to achieve it. Movie makers keep on paving the way in popular culture. Whether or not you ever ingested hallucinogens, we all experience them through their influence in music, movies, fashion, advertising, games and so on. For half a century now, psychedelic culture has branched upward into mass consciousness.
The digital revolution, it was said by drug guru Timothy Leary shortly before his death, is the new LSD. It allows for an increase of information to pass between ourselves and the larger living, breathing organism of which we are all part. Psychedelics work to inhibit the brain filter that prevents overload. Take that filter off and senses, emotions, memories expand, awareness roots and blooms. With psychedelics then, and cyberspace now, heaven and hell are states of mind.
